Exclusive: Heroin claimed record 227 lives in 2013

May 15, 2014

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Editor’s Note: This is a summary of an exclusive Gannett Wisconsin Media investigation that publishes Sunday. You can read the full version of the story on this website or in any of our 10 Gannett Wisconsin Media daily newspapers.

Heroin continues to leave its deadly mark on Wisconsin, claiming a record 227 lives last year, according to Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team research.

The death toll is a 10 percent increase from 206 deaths in 2012.

“It’s such a deception that, ‘Oh, I can try this one time, and just for fun,’” said Carol Dixon of Wausau, whose son, Michael, died in March 2013 after crashing his car while high on heroin. “More than likely you’re going to get hooked after that one time, and it has its hold. It is an evil, evil stronghold that people do not have a clue what they’re getting into.”

Heroin deaths have skyrocketed in recent years after averaging about 30 in Wisconsin from 2000 through 2007.

Heroin’s footprint is also spreading, with 39 of the state’s 72 counties reporting a death in which the drug was a primary or contributing factor in 2013, according to the Gannett Wisconsin Media survey of county coroners and medical examiners. Thirty-three counties reported heroin deaths in 2012.

Milwaukee County led the state in 2013 with 67 heroin-related deaths, followed by Dane County with 36. Kenosha, Racine, Waukesha, Washington and Walworth counties reported seven to 12 deaths, while Brown and Marinette counties had six, and Marathon, Winnebago and Wood counties had five.

But as grim as the rising death toll is, experts say the tally understates the true number since heroin is sometimes hard to prove as the cause of death.

“Some of this is difficult for us because people who use drugs don’t always report a death,” said Dr. Kristinza Giese, associate medical examiner in Fond du Lac County. “They’ll leave somebody in a house or somewhere for a few days, and … I can’t say the death is due to heroin unless I see that byproduct in the blood and urine.”

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The heroin death tally also doesn’t include indirect heroin deaths, such as a Wausau woman who died in 2011 of a staph infection contracted from using dirty needles to inject heroin.

Louis Oppor, a state Department of Health Services section chief specializing in substance abuse, said an array of state initiatives launched in the last year should reverse the heroin trend — but not for a few years. The Wisconsin Department of Justice launched an anti-heroin public awareness campaign last September, and Gov. Scott Walker signed a package of seven bills in April aimed at heroin and opiate abuse.

Heroin rose to prominence after OxyContin — a powerful prescription painkiller favored by addicts — was reformulated in 2010 to make it more difficult to grind up the pills for snorting or injection. From 2010-13, Wisconsin’s number of heroin overdose deaths, heroin cases submitted to the State Crime Lab and heroin-related arrests all have more than doubled, according to Gannett Wisconsin Media research and the DOJ.